Tuesday, November 27, 2012

NOSTALGIA:The idea that a plant or group of plants can evoke certain emotions based upon an evolved memory of the landscapes they are associated.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about our emotional experience of landscapes. Why do some landscapes make me feel relaxed and contemplative, while others make me nervous or uncomfortable? Landscape architects, designers, and gardeners have long explored the aesthetic experience of landscapes, but rarely the emotional experience.

I was delighted that the Garden Designer’s Roundtable topic for the month is “Memory and Plants.” It is the perfect excuse for dwelling a bit more deeply on a concept I’ve articulated before, but only partially. I want to write about “nostalgia,” a word I’ve used to describe our emotional reaction to planting design.

Why does this matter? For me, understanding our emotional connection to plants and landscapes holds tremendous potential for all those who design or garden. First, it pushes landscape design past the endless (and tiresome) pendulum swing of geometric vs. naturalistic (or formal vs. informal) design. This fundamentally formalistic concern has distracted us from exploring the full potential of landscape as a dynamic art form. Second, it offers designers a framework for understanding how to create emotional experiences within gardens and landscapes.

Plants, Memory, and Emotion

We are all likely to have very personal and subjective reactions to specific plants. The scent of orange blossoms remind me of a winter afternoon I spent in a Dumbarton Oaks conservatory; Southern Magnolias remind me of a giant tree on my grandmother’s property I played in as a child. These personal memories are poignant connections to plants, people, and places; but these subjective responses are not what I’m interested in here.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

"The fact that human beings create such things as gardens is strange, for it means that there are aspects of our humanity which nature does not naturally accommodate, which we must make room for in nature’s midst. This in turn means that gardens mark our separation from nature even as they draw us closer to it, that there is something distinctly human in us that is related to nature yet is not of the order of nature…"Robert Pogue Harrison - Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition

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Thomas Rainer

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Thomas Rainer is a horticultural futurist fascinated by the intersection of wild plants and human culture. A landscape architect by profession and a gardener by obsession, Thomas has worked on projects such as the U.S. Capitol grounds, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, and The New York Botanical Garden, but is happiest puttering in his small garden in Washington, D.C.

Thomas thinks you should use more natives, plant more daringly, and loosen up that landscape, for crying out loud.

Gardens are points of connection, grounding, and continuity.
Well loved spaces amplify living.

Nature should be interpreted, not imitated in designed landscapes.

Planting design should be bold, daring, and uncompromising.

We can reclaim biodiversity and habitats within human landscapes.

A good day ends with dirt under my nails, grass stains on clothes, and dreams of the next garden.

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